Lilly Endowment will award $125M in grants to community foundations

Eli Lilly and Co. has played a key role in developing key medicines, since its founding in 1876. Some of those drugs include penicillin, polio, Prozac and Zyprexa.
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Emma Naggard helps to plant 1,000 pinwheels in front of The Villages Indiana and the Prevent Child Abuse Indiana headquarters in Indianapolis on Thursday, March 29, 2018. The Villages is just one of many nonprofits that have benefited from Lilly Endowment over the years.(Photo11: Michelle Pemberton/IndyStar)Buy Photo

Lilly Endowment announced today it is pouring $125 million into Indiana community foundations to help strengthen the state's cities and towns.

And in the words of one foundation leader, "it's a big, big deal."

The money reflects the seventh phase of the endowment's Giving Indiana Funds for Tomorrow initiative (GIFT VII). It is nearly double the $66 million offered in the initiative's sixth phase, announced in 2014.

A majority of the money, $76.1 million, will be available as matching grants, ranging from $500,000 to $4 million per community foundation. The remaining $48.9 million will be awarded as community leadership grants.

Lilly Endowment unveiled its GIFT initiative in 1990 to expand Indiana’s fledgling network of community foundations, which are public charities that pool and invest donations and then work with community leaders to identify and address local needs.

When the GIFT program began, there were fewer than a dozen community foundations. Today, there are 94 such organizations making grants to support a host of initiatives, including youth education, violence prevention, affordable housing and health programs in Indiana’s 92 counties.

The combined community foundation assets in Indiana have grown from $100 million in 1990 to nearly $3.6 billion at the end of 2017.

“In the 28 years since GIFT began, community foundations have demonstrated their ability to inspire imagination, generosity and commitment among local residents, donors and volunteers,” said Rob Smith, Lilly Endowment’s vice president for community development.

“Changing economic and cultural dynamics are presenting both significant challenges and important opportunities for Indiana communities," he added.

GIFT VII is designed to help community foundations raise more money and lead the way in building stronger communities.

The Central Indiana Community Foundation, based in Indianapolis, is among those organizations expected to benefit. In 2017, CICF, which includes the Indianapolis Foundation and Legacy Fund, had assets of $816 million.

Brian Payne, foundation president and CEO, said this latest phase of GIFT "is a big, big deal" and positions community foundations throughout the state for even greater impact.

Building up each foundation's unrestricted grant-making capability is "incredibly important," he said.

"Community foundations can only lead when they have their own money to give," as opposed to donor-restricted pools of money, he said.

Additionally, the money set aside for community leadership initiatives would allow the Central Indiana Community Foundation to scale up initiatives it's working on right now, including dismantling systems of institutional racism, Payne said.

"We have tremendous momentum, but we're slowed by not having the capital investment yet."

Amir Pasic, dean of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, likens community foundations to public squares of old, where people come together to talk and to solve problems.

Rather than restricting funding, the endowment "entrusts the community — and the community foundations as spokespeople for the community — to come up with their own priorities," he said.

"It’s really kind of a good news story for institutions that actually solve problems in our communities," Pasic said. That is timely today "when so much of the news that we talk about is not only resource scarcity but also a scarcity of good will toward each other and working together."

To encourage residents and others to support unrestricted endowments in local communities, the Lilly Endowment will provide $2 for every $1 donated for unrestricted endowments through Dec. 31, 2020.

Agencies can apply for the grants at lillyendowment.org. Grant amounts will be based on the population of the county the community foundation serves. Deadline to apply is Jan. 31, 2019.

Lilly Endowment is a private philanthropic foundation supporting causes in the areas of religion, education and community development. It was established in 1937 by J.K. Lilly Sr., former president of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co., and his sons, Eli and J.K. Jr.

Contact IndyStar reporter Maureen Gilmer at 317-444-6879 or maureen.gilmer@indystar.com. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter: @MaureenCGilmer.